View more of the Sun's opinion section

I see the fight to raise minimum wages is continuing. I do not understand this. This is bad for citizens and will only make the rich richer. Everything is based on minimum wage.

To raise it will raise rent, utilities, food and all expenses necessary for daily life. If you are on the bottom rung of the ladder, you will make more money, but you will not be able to buy any more than now. If you are above the rung one or two steps, you will not be able to buy what you are paying for now. Raising the minimum wage will increase welfare benefits and food stamp benefits because many more people will live beneath the new living wages. Many of the people who are on fixed incomes, pensions and Social Security will become eligible for food stamps and state help programs.

What we need is a jobs program — get everyone back to work.

We hear so much about protecting small business. This will do the opposite. Get us jobs.

Join the Discussion:

Previous Discussion: 17 comments so far…

Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.

Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.

I find it very strange that anyone would blame inflation and the cost of living - on minimum wage. Cost of living is connected to many things and will raise whether mimimum pay is raised or not.

Living wage is important especially in a recession. Why? Because it stimulates the economy. Living wage is important in our community. Why? Because two-thirds of all school children are living in poverty - yes- a large portion of our community lives in poverty. Poverty means a family of four living on 25,000 a year or less.

When the poor cannot provide for themselves who do you think pays? When people cannot pay for insurance, housing, food - they do whatever they can to survive including use government programs.

Wouldn't it be better to provide families dignity and a living wage? Rather than oppress them into being working poor? Or worse, unable to work at all. We all pay when families cannot provide for themselves.

Wage floors have the effect of pricing low productivity workers out of the job market. It's a simple matter of supply and demand.

Typically, the issue of minimum wage has been used merely for political pandering. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that more and more people are unable to earn a livable wage. Sadly, a great many people fail to understand that raising the minimum wage would only make matters worse in the current economic climate.

Also, the minimum wage issue diverts people from the causal policies that fuel the debate over the minimum wage.

Issues like giving people a living wage ignore the fundamental problems that are destroying this country's middle class. It's not necessarily the height of wage rates which should concern us. It is exactly the purchasing power of those wages which is the problem.

Sadly, it is usually capitalism which gets the blame. But the real reason is that capitalism has not been allowed to do what it does best; allocate scarce resources for the greatest benefit to society in the satisfaction of their needs a wants.

The two-income household, wage stagnation, widening wage gap, massive wealth disparity, erosion of our manufacturing base, huge trade deficits, etc. All of these problems can be traced back to the early to mid 1970's, yet very few are able to make the causal connection. And when it's presented to them, all of the arm-chair economists come out of the woodwork to discredit, discount, and thoroughly bash the idea.

Almost the entire mainstream of academia has been set up to provide intellectual cover for the status-quo system. Nobel-laureate economists get weekly opportunities to spread their venom of the status-quo to media outlets nation-wide. The masses have been poisoned effectively for nearly a century by this backward, asinine system. So effectively that it has rendered them incapable of critical thought when their theories have been thoroughly exploded right in front of them.

Since I'm retired, I volunteer here in Canada during our income tax season to prepare income tax returns free for seniors and low income folks.It is a real eye opener to see how little income so many people actually receive. Canada is light years ahead of America in taking care of our poor. Our welfare system is supplemented with a "rent geared to income" programme to enable many people on welfare to afford their rent.Here in Ontario our minimum wage is $10.75 per hour and it permits our working poor to exist at a much better level than America's does.Those arguments in this letter and many of the postings advocating keeping the minimum wage low strike me as cruel and misinformed. All governments should strive to raise up the standard of living of the lower levels of society. It shocks me how many Americans blame the poor and call them lazy. Your system is abhorrent in so many ways, insanely favouring the rich while castrating the poor and decimating the shrinking middle class.That is no way to create and maintain a just society.

Over the last 35 years the wealthy gained 273% more wealth while working class people got squat. The problems we are experiencing have much to do with disparity and income equality. Henry Ford knew that when he paid the highest wages in the industry. He knew someone had to buy his auto, why not his employees?

Greed will be the destruction of this great nation and those very wealthy people "hording their gold" will cause it to happen. We will reach a point of diminishing returns and the working class won't be able to afford a pot to piss in. 76% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings.

Melba.. All due respect, you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about. You could take the minimum wage to zero and you would still pay $3.65 for a gallon gas of and $5 million for a decent apartment in Manhattan. Given a domestic workforce of roughly 150 million people very few work for minimum wage. In 2012 there were about 3.7 million workers working at minimum wage. These few workers have no effect on aggregate prices or unemployment.

Before the current economic crisis the unemployment rate was below 5% and near the lowest in the nation's history. The minimum wage was roughly the same then as it is now.

Minimum wage is for starter jobs for those that drop out of high school. They need somewhere to start out and gain experience for real paying jobs------I see a lot of Macy's employees walking the floor in suits, dress pants, etc, that are pulling down minimum wage. Kohls, JCP, retail workers in their 30's and 40's all the same. The days of the teen, no high school diploma were those making minimum wage are gone. You have a large subset of the population working minimum wage. Even salaried people have been cut down to minimum wage in many cases because for a lot of them the 40 hour work week has been obliterated. They now work 50+ hours at that same salary. See what working an extra 500 hours or more per year does to your "hourly" wage. You'd be surprised how many not working minimum wage suddenly become minimum wage because of extra hours...and technically not getting paid.

What Melba seems to be trying to tell us is that people making minimum wage should just be happy with it because raising it might affect the seniors who are on a fixed income. So just live in your little dumpy apartment or in a box under the highway so she can still afford to go to a locals casino and eat at the buffet after playing her nickle slots.

The logical conclusion to Ms Siggeirsson's comments is that we should drop the entire concept of a minimum wage and then brace for a spate of falling prices. A suggestion - don't hold your breath while waiting! It would be a LONG wait - for prices to drop. The drop in wages would probably be as close as one can get to instantaneous.

El_Lobo: I really have to disagree with you about the 7:48 am comment of Mr. Desaulniers. I would classify him as actually being quite charitable toward a poor wayward neighbor.

The Pain with these Low Wages can be quickly explained by The Walmart effect. Wages are so Low that Taxpayers are saddled with almost One Million in subsidies to workers per Low Wage Supercenter. All the while 400 Families have cornered Half of all Wealth in the U.S. If you still cannot see the problem of low wages - maybe You should give it a go and let us know how you make out.

The best way to increase the minimum wage for yourself is through gaining more experience, skills and knowledge. Unfortunately, to do so (get more experience, skills, and knowledge) you have to start out at the minimum wage. It's not where you start out. It's where you end up.

Yes we need more jobs for American CITIZENS. Shameful that Obama and company penalize those who seek to employ Americans rather than illegals--exactly opposite of our laws. More than 7 million jobs have been stolen from Americans because Obama and Holder refuse to ENFORCE OUR LAWS. The stolen jobs are bringing wages down, way down.

The minimum wage is MANIPULATED BY THE TAX CODE. You can work part time at minimum and do OK IF you claim a number of dependent children and get all the refundable credits. Some get in excess of $10K back each year although they NEVER PAID IN. Don't you recall the minor media attention to millions of illegals stealing tax refunds by claiming kids not even in the country?

The minimum wage is but one small piece of the economic puzzle, and we have to address the puzzle as a whole if we want positive change (i.e. lower unemployment, decent living standards, and economic opportunity). Raising it will not "save the poor" and more than lowering it would generate jobs -- not without changes in the other pieces of the puzzle.

What we need is to change the puzzle! Our tax code is a blatantly unfair to all but the well-connected; our social welfare & foreign aid programs & ALL government contracts are known more their fraud, waste, and abuse than anything else; we have a regulatory structure that seems more intent in reducing economic activity than in regulating it; and now there's an immigration chnage on the horizon that would bring in MILLIONS more unskilled laborers to compete with our young & unemployed for the dwindiling number of jobs we have available. This is simply "government gone wild" -- unaccountable, opaque, unresponsive, all-consuming.

What we need are real reformers willing to get beyond the partisan posturing and tackle real problems head on. And there are some, on both sides of the aisle, that seem to have the fortitude to at least try (you may disagree with themon this or that, but at least they're not "singing the same old song").

Interesting to read people that don't work for Minimum wage defending how well off those that do are and how bad it will be for everyone to pay them more!

This is the kind of thing that we didn't like in Europe.. and started our own country.. now we have a new wave of American Aristocrats that sound a lot like the Europeans did! My how the times don't change much!

The minimum wage argument is a bit silly. No one lives on the minimum wage. There is a spread between what things cost and what people make. The only families in this country that are accumulating substantial wealth are families making in excess of $250,000 a year.The spread is closed through generational wealth transfers, entitlements and crime. The average Walmart worker does make about 13 bucks an hour. But, Walmart loses close to $4 billion a year in inventory shrinkage. Much of it due to employees according to them.

The average Costco worker makes about $47,000 a year. Theft that Costco is almost nil.

You can have good wages, rich benefits, and minimize entitlements and crime, or you can have the opposite and have crime be one of the nation's biggest industries. Either way people fill their bellies. Theft of food is one of the fastest-growing crimes in the country, and income-based entitlements are very costly.

El_Lobo: Per your 10:43 p.m.: I DID read Mr. Desaulniers letter. Please re-read mine. In my opinion he WAS being charitable toward the US in his choice of language. He could so easily, and honestly, have been much more nasty - although some of that might not have passed the moderator...

Minimum wage isn't designed to live on, it's a base to measure how far over the wage do we pay the skilled and talented work force. If you're not happy with working conditions and wages at your place of work go to school get training to do something else and quit whining.

I'm usually on the progressive side of things. I've seen immigrants come to this country work two or three jobs at minimum wages. They saved, invested, and lived below their means. In a few years many of them have through hard work advanced and got better paying jobs or started businesses of their own. My parents had the same work ethic and philosophy of saving. That was passed to me along with the family home leaving me no mortgage payments.I gross less then 20K a year still I have managed to accumulate two income properties (one in Hawaii,one in Las Vegas) and portfolio around 6 times my annual income.I don't do vacations on credit, I save and pay cash.I've had two autos brand new.First one I bought in 72. when that died in 89 I bought my current Chevy P/U. Don't have a smart phone, no high def TV,I still have clothes I wear from twenty years ago.I can be frugal to say the very least.Long story short it's not how much money you make it's how much you save (and invest)If you are not happy making minimum educate yourself and get a better job or start your own business. Live below your means,save,and invest wisely.

"We need to re-establish the basic labor standard that if you work full time, you'll earn at least enough to get by. If we raised the federal minimum wage to $10 per hour, nearly 30 million American workers would get a raise, nine million of whom are parents.

And contrary to popular misconception, most of these workers are not teenagers working part time: 88 percent are at least 20 years old, and 55 percent work full time.

Opponents will argue, as they always have, that raising the minimum wage will kill jobs or make it harder for businesses to hire new workers.

Economists have studied these claims to death and the best research shows that minimum-wage increases have little to no effect on employment.

In fact, there is ample evidence that labor market conditions can improve after a minimum-wage increase because low-wage workers have more money to spend, and they're less likely to be scrambling to find higher-paying jobs.

That's why 85 percent of small businesses already pay wages higher than the minimum, and some big corporate entities are following suit."

Wage hikes without PRODUCTIVITY increases are inflationary. Our economy is fluctuating between DEFLATION and inflation while it figures out what's going on. The repeated manipulations have confused our economy. We need to STOP MANIPULATING and let things seek a natural level. And, that means if you don't work, you don't eat--including custodial parents. Whenever we try to give something for free or reduced price, we manip0ulate the economy. Simple math shows there are not enough rich / affluent Americans to pay for the federal government handouts, nor for the wars, so what we gonna do? Stop spending what we don't have.